The last part of this passage "always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres" has become our family motto, but the part that hit me tonight, which I am going to have to do some praying and heart searching on, is that Love does not demand it's own way.

Beautiful and well said! I needed that soo badly, I think it was just for me :) Just got off the phone with my "inmate" and he was angry because I was not there earlier, love is surely not always reciprocated! Again thank you.

A-MEN! So well said, so well put, still so wish you were my neighbor! :-)

You know, I couldn't help but have my mind wander as you were reading this to the greatest act of love in all of human history. My thoughts turned to Christ's crucifixion and his plea to the Father to "Forgive them for they know not what they do." In his greatest moment of agony and despair, amidst physical and emotional pain we can't even begin to imagine, he still pled for mercy and forgiveness for those very people who were hurting him so deeply.

I don't believe our children hurt us on purpose. In fact, I believe in those moments when they do hurt us to our very core and scare the bejeebees out of us, (Oh yah, BTDT, so get what that means!) they have no idea what they're really doing. They are reacting out of their own pain and fear and desperation...all of which cloud their ability to reason or even string two rational thoughts together. It's in those very moments, those moments when they are at their worst and doing their most unthinkable stuff, that they so desperately need our patience, our kindness, our willingness to go the distance with them, our unconditional love and acceptance and above all else, they need our forgiveness.

I am so blessed that God has placed you in my path! I've been on this journey for three years and have found so much support from other moms in the trenches who are willing to bare their souls in writing. Yours is a blog that I point so many to, because you have a way of reaching us where we are and helping us up. Thank you. Be blessed. radmamadread

AMEN AMEN AMEN AMEN!!!!!! It took me way longer than it should've to move from a selfish, needing feedback sort of love to this kind of love. Not that I even do it now, but I atleast know what I am striving for(: Thanks again for doing these - seriously, it is so so so so very helpful in so many ways, not the leats of which is just knowing others are out there fighting the good fight.

Answer: you just do your best at treating people the way you've described in that video, and the feeling comes. Eventually.

Thank you. I kind of knew but didn't really know how much of a "needing feedback" love person I was (thank you to the commenter above for that phrase)...now I know that this higher kind of love is the only true one. Wow.

I too aknowledge that love just isnt enough for my RADish. Me loving her will by itself not heal her hurts. But LOVE unconditional, and compassionate is what drives every step of the healing process. From reading others radical blogs to therapists to special schools to theraputic parenting. these things are sustainable because above all else I LOVE my daughter, whether or not she ever loves me back.

After the day I've had with my son, this was something I definitely needed to hear. Especially the part about being "irritable" and "demanding its own way." *sigh* I, like my children, am still a work in progress.

I love your honesty at the end of this video! I messed up the other day and listened to our family therapist during a crisis. She instructed me to take Zane to the hospital and I did. Now he's committed for the 72 hour hold and while he said he was hearing voices, he's also drastically changed the way he described them. I want him home so I can love him. I'm visiting him and calling him, but I feel so certain this has done more harm than good. I simply cannot show him my love while he's there. Not the way I can when he's home anyway. So, I'm spending my morning here, with your site, waiting until I can see him again. Thank you for your blogging and your authenticity. I'm pretty sure I'll never reach out the way I did to the "resource" I did again. Can't do my work without the recipient.

crap i write about

years of drivel

"My story is important not because it is mine, God knows, but because if I tell it anything like right, the chances are you will recognize that in many ways it is also yours.
Maybe nothing is more important than that we keep track, you and I,of these stories of who we are and where we have come from and the people we have met along the way because it is precisely through these stories, in all their particularity, as I have long believed and often said, that God makes himself known to each of us most powerfully and personally."